


in equal scale

by Dubiousculturalartifact (222Ravens)



Category: Leverage, October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Character Study, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 18:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20952629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/222Ravens/pseuds/Dubiousculturalartifact
Summary: No one in Faerie does anything for free, no help that comes without thorns.(Well. Almost.)





	in equal scale

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching an episode of Leverage right after I read some Toby Daye and I thought ‘holy shit I need crossover fic’, but there was sadly very little, so I had to go and write it myself! (With thanks to Holland for helping pin down Hardison’s heritage, and bouncing ideas off)
> 
> Knowledge of both properties is not 100% needed to read this, though there is a light allusion to something that could be considered a spoiler in in the October Daye books, and some of the worldbuilding might not necessarily be clear. If you havent seen Leverage, they’ll probably just come across as colourful, interesting characters.
> 
> Also, yes, it's in first person, but so are the October Daye books, and it just didn't feel right, writing it in any other style.
> 
> (title from Hamlet)

There are a lot of lost ones in Faerie, or those who have made contact with it. Changelings and humans who got caught up in things bigger than them. Fae on the wrong side of someone more powerful. Those desperate and foolish enough to ask for something, to bargain or be caught. Most of them stay lost, fumbling in the dark, with no way out, and a well-earned fear of asking any aid. No one in Faerie does anything for free, no help that comes without thorns.

It’s our way. Sometimes I wonder whether it had to be.

The one in front of me was either too brave, too stubborn, or too desperate, to have learned that lesson, just yet. They wouldn’t be standing just inside my door, long-rotted seaweed sticking to the soles of their shoes, if they’d learned any better.

“I asked. Now… you name the price, and I’ll pay it.” They said, with a shaking voice.

I named it.

The seconds ticked by, time sliding under, as I waited for the exhalation of breath, the one that would tell me they’d made up their mind.

A sigh came next, defeated. “So high?” They whispered, and I could see them losing their hope, watching it fade into so much dust. They weren’t going to pay. “I… I can’t.”

“I won’t walk you to the door.” I said, and wondered what they saw, when they looked at me.

They turned as if to leave, then stopped, and there was something in their eyes, just enough of a fireflies’ glimpse of light, for me to be interested. “Why ask what you know I won’t give?”

I let my eyes shift, my face turn to something more protean, and far older. I didn’t smile, but there was enough of a flash of teeth for them to have seen it.

They shrank back a little, before they caught themselves. _Good._ Then they’d blink, and I’d be back as I was before. The ghosts of the ones I’d lost haunting my eyes for a heartbeat, before I traded them back, for a gaze that was just a little bit softer. Not kinder, though. I’m rarely that.

“So you won’t want to pay it. So you’ll go home, and forget this.” I said, and knew they wouldn’t believe me. Hoped they would. “Any explanation beyond that… It’s not a story you’ve earned.”

They looked almost apologetic, which surprised me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. You aren’t cruel, are you? The stories say you are, but you aren’t. You’re _fair_.”

“That’s probably worse.” I pointed out. I couldn’t help it.

They shrugged._ “_I’m asking for you to give me my world, back. It’s right that you should want an equal price, in return.”

Maybe that’s why I did it. Most people didn’t get the nuance of it, or never cared to wonder. They saw me as a villain, and I was content to let them see the part. Or maybe… Maybe it was because it was for their child, and I was a mother long before I ever became what I am, now.

I rose out of my seat. “Wait here.” I said, and went over to the coffee table, rummaging through all manner of things. “I can’t offer you any material aid, that came from my own power. We made no bargains, no deal was struck, and no price was paid. That’s the rules. But I can send you to look elsewhere, especially if there are other debts to settle, in the sending.”

I found it under a pile of salmon skin, and a leaf from a plant that didn’t exist anymore. A bright white, incongruously normal looking business card, with a single word printed on it, and some contact details. I handed it to them. They took it, with trembling hands, snatching the way anyone drowning grasps for a lifeline.

They read it, and looked back at me, some small measure of their hope flooding back. “There are rumours, I’ve heard, of an... association, you might call it. A group of those who will help, but claim no price for the help. If you are desperate enough, you’ll believe them, even if it seems too good to be wholly true. I might have tried, if I’d known it was real. I didn’t believe it, though.”

“They’re real. Oh, the price is still there. It’s just not on you to pay. It will be paid in other ways, balance found elsewhere than in your blood and promises. They run a different game than mine.”

“Who are they?” They asked, tucking the card away in the pocket close to their heart, with a cautious, careful gesture.

I thought about that, for a moment.

“You likely won’t know them long enough to find out. They’ll help you, and then they’ll move on. It’s their way, and those they help will be too grateful to question it, and never, ever, thank them.”

Anything else was theirs to find out, by rights. A lot of stories aren’t mine to tell.

But they’re an interesting bunch, all told. An odd mix, really. Not the kinds of Fae that usually mix, not all together. Certainly not in such a way that they work together so very, very well. It’s unclear even to me how they first met, beyond the rumours too ridiculous to believe, even after I met them, and saw how they work.

What _did_ I know? Well. These are the things I might know about them, or things someone might tell you, and most of it might even be true:

One of them is Merrow, and the less you ask about how long he’s spent on dry land, the better for you it’ll be. A few, a _very_ few, will learn the truth of it one day, maybe. If they gained his loyalty and he’s gained theirs, and the circumstances and the tides are right. It’s not for you to know, though. Just, know that he hits hard and unrelentingly, and that he has debts to himself, that he doesn’t believe he’ll ever manage to pay. Know that he is kinder than he looks, in a very dangerous way.

Another is Tylwyth Teg changeling: she inherited human ingenuity and fae cunning, an alchemist’s love of gold and a that species’ head for heights, for flight, wind rushing through her hair and the cold thin air barely touching her. Her... social oddities can be explained by either side of her heritage, there are plenty of fae and human alike who match that way of being. Her own fae father was absent and too slow to ask, but when a fae named Archie presented the Choice in his stead, she took it and ran away to Faerie without looking back. There are more cases like that, than you might think.

The third is changeling too, half-Coblynau. He never got very good at the traditional forms of metalworking, but there’s another kind of making he’s always had affinity for. In writing the code that travels down wires, tracing motherboards laid down with metals and silicon and soldering irons. Tracing truth and opening doors that would, in any other time, be held fast with metal locks. Of any of them, he might have his foot firmest in the human world, but he knows who he is, and never hesitated when he made his Choice.

The fourth is Cait Sidhe. Lithe and mercurial, with a love of claiming the lost things, and yes, before you ask, she’s heard every joke in the book about cat burglars. Some will say there’s Siren in her bloodline too, as a way to explain the way she’s able to be anything to anyone, seem like the answer to whatever they want most, just by talking to them. But nothing about her is a fact that you can pin down, her name least of all. Maybe the Library of Lost Stars knows. Not even I do.

The last, and the leader of them, a knight gone somewhat more errant than most, is Daoine Sidhe, the taste of blood and illusion-spinning equally weighted in his eyes. Part of the drive for king-making has always been knowledge of their _un_making, after all. He mourns his changeling child, the one too thin-blooded for the fey court to care to save, the thing that made him break away from Faerie. He might have asked me for help, if he’d been in the neighbourhood at the time. I’m almost glad he wasn’t, even if the loss broke his faith.

He’d believed in all of it once, believed in the courts and chivalry and being a chess piece in their games. He truly did, but he has other games to play now, ones with different rules. If he sometimes drifts in dreams, that’s a choice he makes on his own time, but he never lets the goal slip from his sight.

Individually, they’d be as lost as so many others are, in Faerie. Together? They’re a dangerous, and thoroughly fascinating bunch. Some might call them heroes, even if they’d never claim the title themselves. I hope I never get on their bad side, because I’m not even sure who would win, in that particular contest, and I’d hate to win, almost as much as I would hate to lose.

I didn’t say any of that, though. I was stretching the rules telling this one as much as I was, but I told them this, too, because it was what they needed to know.

“Faerie is built on bargains, and most of them aren’t fair. Faerie is built on tricks and false promises, and leading you astray. Faerie is ancient and powerful, to the point it seems unmovable.

They provide… Leverage.”

**Author's Note:**

> (I'm @DubiousCA on twitter, dubiousculturalartifact on tumblr, and I absolutely love comments, if you feel like it. :)


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